The Veil of Benzaiten
by Liathel
Summary: Tenten is fed up with always being the "weak link", no matter how much she trains. So she embarks on a special quest, after consulting Tsunade about it and meets someone unexpected, who will teach her the value of grace over force. Oh, and she just may learn an amazing technique along the way, which might just be able to kick butts.
1. PROLOGUE

PROLOGUE: TODAY, WE ARE...

She was down to her last pouch of Shuriken. Again.

Pressing her back into the tree trunk behind her more firmly, Tenten allowed herself a muttered curse as she went about patting down her pockets for something, anything she could use to her advantage.

And then Neji's chakra signature was almost next to her. She let herself fall from the branch purely on instinct and barely avoided the jabbing hand of her teammate.

'_Shit, when did he get here? I didn't feel him approach at all!'_

Cursing she tore through the underbrush, not caring about stealth anymore as Neji had located her so easily even without the use of his kekkai genkai.

Weaving, jumping, ducking. It was all her daily routine, she was good at it. She was agile and fast and flexible. And still she only managed to break through the foliage onto their usual training ground, before the Hyuuga was on her.

Her stumble, after his first strike landed between her shoulder blades, saved her from the second and third strikes. The fourth one struck home again and catapulted her body around in a wide arc, so she now faced her opponent.

Already the numbness spread from where his last strike had hit her shoulder. In a few moments, she knew, she wouldn't be able to use her left arm at all, rendering her last option of summoning more weapons from her discarded training pack, which she had hoped to reach before he could close her tenketsu, useless.

This meant they were down to hand-to-hand again. And again she was only left with about ten measly weapons to fend against the Ultimate Defense.

She was about to open her mouth to surrender quietly, but Neji rushed at her again, before she could even begin to form the words, leaving her no option but to defend, lest she got hit in even more vital points.

So she ducked.

They easily fell into their routine after that: The Hyuuga prodigy pushing her all over the place, gracefully spinning to attack her chakra-system, in the process bruising a few of her muscles and bones as she tried to avoid the even greater pain of a numbed tenketsu. And her, Tenten, desperately trying to keep up with him, to pose at least a bit of a challenge, to push past her limits and onto greater deeds.

And as always in their routine, it didn't work.

After only eleven tenketsu strikes, she had avoided the remarkable number of thirteen this time, Tenten felt her right leg give out and she stumbled to the ground, panting.

Neji gracefully slid out of his stance and nodded to her.

"Twenty-one minutes, Tenten, you're not improving at all!"

She threw him a dirty look, but he had already turned to go pick up his pack, looking for his water bottle.

Tenten felt the tell-tale prick of tears in the corners of her eyes and concentrated on cursing up a storm in her head to keep the tears from spilling over.

'_He could at least have put it in a nicer way!'_ She growled in her head and pulled herself over to her duffle bag, right leg dragging uselessly through the dirt.

It wasn't that she hadn't improved at all, she reasoned with herself as she rummaged through her things for water and the ointment Hinata had given her, to help speed up the recovery rate of clogged tenketsu points, because Neji wouldn't close them entirely in a mere training match, they would have to regain functionality on their own.

She HAD improved, just as he had yet again. He probably didn't realize it, but she trained like mad to be able to keep up with his and Lee's insane improvement rates.

But that seemed to be the extent of her abilities.

Wincing, she applied the soothing balm to her left shoulder first, she would need her arm sooner than her leg anyway, and then set to the task of smearing the stuff on her leg, without taking off her pants. At least she had worn a tank top, a small blessing on this god-awful day.

Neji meanwhile, had taken up his usual spot underneath her old target practice tree and looked like he didn't even remember just sparing with her, so relaxed was his posture in his meditative stance.

She sent another dark glare his way, he didn't even care about her anymore!

Sure, it came with the routine, she got hit by his Juuken almost on a daily basis and knew how to take care of herself after that, but would it hurt him to at least pretend that he cared about a teammate in pain?

Apparently so. She sighed and rolled up her pant leg a little more, already her arm was feeling all prickly, a sign that the ointment was working its wonders.

She hardly could blame Neji, though. After all he had dedicated most of today's training to her new weapon's technique. No wonder he was in a pissy mood after being disappointed by her yet again.

Hell, even SHE was disappointed with the ineffectiveness of it. She would dismiss this technique, though it was quite flashy and fancy, from her repertoire as soon as she got home.

* * *

It was almost sunset, when the final two members of their team returned from their daily crazy-whatnot, cartwheeling into the clearing, full of enthusiasm.

Tenten was already up again and almost done storing her wayward weapons back into her scrolls from today's Kaiten warm-up, which she had also failed at miserably, she dryly remembered.

"Yosh! We are back, friends! And we set a new record in pull-ups on the first Hokage's hitai-ate!"

Aha, so that was what they had been up to today.

"Did your sparring yield a bountiful amount of new strength, my dear students? What about your new technique Tenten, will it be a useful asset for our future missions?"

She flinched at Gai-sensei's booming voice, almost involuntarily, as Lee cartwheeled over to the tree to bother Neji, who had yet to even acknowledge their presence.

Tenten only sighed and wrapped up her last scroll before stuffing it into her bag and shouldering said cloth container.

Gai had stopped hopping from foot to foot almost as soon as Tenten failed to reprimand him for his round-about way of speech or uttering a biting remark about how her techniques always saved their asses on most missions.

* * *

Though he was as loud and flamboyant as Lee, Gai had the distinct advantage of age on his side. His intense nature didn't stop him from sensing subtle changes in those close to him.

And so he looked at his only female student with slight concern.

But if there was one thing he knew about his youthful flower it was that she hated being treated carefully, especially in front of her teammates, so he put on his best serious teacher face and coughed loudly into his palm, to get her attention.

* * *

Tenten's head jerked up at Gai-sensei's sudden coughing fit.

But he didn't seem to be in any discomfort, as he beckoned her over with a serious expression, or a serious as Gai could get. He looked more like a constipated penguin.

Somehow she found a disturbing sense of comfort in that thought, as she trotted after him, away from the clearing.

He stopped out of earshot of her two remaining teammates, which made Tenten uneasy. He wasn't going to try to explain something "delicate" to her again, right?

She vividly remembered the day he had tried to explain menstruation to her and seriously wished, she couldn't. It had been a disaster, considering she'd had her period for almost a year already at that point.

"So, Tenten." He began and she sent him a suspicious look.

"Did you become stronger today?"

She had been ready to defend any over-the-top accusations about her springtime of youth, but somehow this simple question threw her off balance.

She kept silent and stared at her sensei, who sighed as if the crux of the world rested on his shoulders.

"I know you sometimes feel inadequate, Tenten. It is only natural. You are, after all, in the company of a genius with a priceless bloodline limit and my number one student of the springtime of youth!"

He threw her a nice-guy pose, hopefully to tell her, he was only joking. She didn't want to have this conversation.

"Way to make me feel special, Gai-sensei!" She grumbled and turned to leave, "Now, if you're done making me feel even more down and unremarkable than before, I would like to go home and drown in my bathtub."

"Tenten! Stopstopstop! You know I didn't mean it this way!"

"Or do I?"

He sighed again and placed a hand on her, thankfully uninjured, right shoulder.

"What happened?"

And suddenly, the tears were back, pricking insistently at her periphery. She pushed them back with all her might and only managed to send Gai a shaky smile.

"Nothing happened, Gai-sensei. Nothing at all.

Even though I desperately try every single day to become stronger, to finally be able to best one of the boys, to show them that they are not the only special ones, all I can do, all I AM, is to be able to keep up like a weak copy of their determination. I may be stronger than yesterday today, but then they are stronger than the me of today every time. I…"

"Tenten, hush!" Gai-sensei carefully pulled her a little closer and she let herself be dragged into his tentative embrace.

If he wanted to, her sensei could be a very tactful and empathic person and she was thankful for that.

* * *

Gai awkwardly patted his female student's back as she tried not to cry into his shoulder, still her body shook slightly.

He was a bit floored at how hurt she sounded about it. He had known she had always felt slightly left behind by Lee and Neji and even him for favoring Lee, but he had always thought she was the most mature of his students and could easily deal with it.

Apparently he had been wrong and it made him feel bad as a teacher not to have noticed just how bruised her ego was by how little her hard work yielded for her in comparison to her teammates.

Because Tenten was not weak at all, had she been on any other team, or even in comparison of what he knew of the other kunoichi in her age group, she was easily the strongest, most hard working and diligent to ninja life.

And even though she seemed to value herself so little, he knew that, without her, their team dynamics would be out of sync. She was an important part of their team and if she wanted to prove her individual importance…

He had to do something, before she lost all that to her insecurities, he resolved to talk to the only one, whom Tenten would listen to now, because she obviously wouldn't listen to his advice.

Carefully he pushed her shoulders back a little, holding her at arm's length.

"Maybe they're already on their day after tomorrow strength wise, but that just means you have to up the ante, Tenten. You'll have to learn to already live in the future so that yesterday will become your today and your today your tomorrow!"

She sent him a little smile and rubbed her hand over her eyes.

"That didn't make very much sense, sensei…"

He only chortled his trademark boisterous laugh and steered her back to the clearing.

"Who knows, what tomorrow brings, Tenten?"


	2. ACT 1, SCENE 1

Hey there!

Eh, so. I actually wanted to finish the complete first act of the story before posting but then realized that I had over 2000 words down before the first scene was even finished so, here you go.

I'm a little slow at picking up a story's pace because I want to set a plot just right before I start it off, so please bear with me here, kay? :)

Oh, just a quick note for some of you, who might not have visited my profile yet: I'm german, so english is only my second language and though I DO spell check and use a thesaurus for a bigger variety in vocabulary, there still might be a bunch of mistakes I'm not aware of. If you find anything or have the feeling you could help me out, feel free to tell me ;)

Second note: The whole structure with Acts and Scenes was actually done on a whim, but it fit the storyline beyond nicely so blah. I think it's because I've been reading too many greek tragedies recently (I'm a sucker for history, okay? xD) and I like obsucre allusions so feel free to ignore the Act and Scene titles, it's not vital to understand what I'm alluding to. It just makes me feel better for not being good at coming up with actual titles...

I'll shut up now...

* * *

ACT 1: INTO THE WILD

SCENE 1: THE THREE SAGES IN COUNCIL

"PLEASE TSUNADE-SAMA! I BEG OF YOU, DO SOMETHING BEFORE MY BEAUTIFUL FLOWER LOSES HER WAY!"

Tsunade glared at the flamboyant Jounin, who was uncomfortably invading her personal space by leaning across the desk, thus eliminating her last barrier.

"And what, pray tell, do you WANT me to do? We already tried making her a medic, she lacks the chakra control for it. She's partaking in my strength classes though and she's not bad at it…"

"NO! I DON'T WANT HER JUST TO BECOME A BRUTE LIKE Y…"

"Like _who,_ Gai?" Tsunade cut in sharply and eerily calm before Gai could finish is probably fatal sentence.

The Green Beast caught himself and scoffed into his hand.

"I am very sorry, Hokage-sama, that was very unbecoming of me. I'm just feeling a little anxious for my student…"

Tsunade nodded. Now that he had sobered up she might actually be able to talk to him logically and calmly.

"I understand your worry, Gai, I really do. Tenten is not a bad kunoichi, not by far. She's actually one of the few who possesses equal strength in each area. But that is probably the source of the problem. She's a jack-of-all-trades and except for her accuracy she has no redeeming quality…"

She held up her hand to stop Gai's protest before it started and the man wisely shut his mouth again.

"I'm not saying this is bad. We could actually use more people like her. Having specialists is nice and all, but it's difficult to do normal missions, which require a broader array of skills for them… But I can understand that she may feel underappreciated because of her…"

"Normalcy?" Shizune cut in quietly from her position behind Tsunade's left shoulder, clutching her nin-pig a little tighter.

Tsunade threw her assistant a surprised look.

"How long have you been here, Shizune?"

The younger woman coughed and rolled her eyes.

"Since the beginning, Tsunade-sama…"

"Really?"

"Yes, I let Gai-san into the room, remember?"

The Hokage threw the mentioned male a glance and he nodded vigorously.

"Oh… I'm sorry, dear. Sometimes I forget you're here… This is pretty embarrassing…"

Shizune laughed and set Tonton on the ground, who took the chance to dash out of the slightly ajar door on the back of the office.

"I know, Tsunade-sama. I'm just that awesome an assistant! But that's exactly why I feel I can kind of understand where Tenten-san seems to be coming from…"

She focused her attention on Gai after receiving a nod from the Hokage, who still looked slightly miffed at the thought of missing her assistants presence in the room.

"Let me guess, Gai-san. She's always there for everyone, every time someone needs to get in extra training…"

Gai nodded and Shizune held up one finger.

"And she's always the supporting member on missions? While everyone else is the frontline and barges in all the time, she stays behind and watches out for everyone's backs?"

Another nod from the man and another finger was held up. Tsunade rubbed at her temple, slowly getting where her assistant wanted these statements to go.

"And you all always run to her if there's something bothering you, she has to break up fights, referee matches and keep, excuse me for saying it so bluntly, you and Lee-san in check?"

Reluctantly Gai nodded again and Shizune held up a third finger, turning to her master and shrugged.

"So she's a punching-bag, a background player and has to have an exceedingly calm composure to keep the equilibrium. In essence, she's a low-profile, normal person. At least for a ninja."

Tsunade frowned at the brown-haired woman. This sounded kind of like her assistant as well and she suddenly felt guilty. She didn't like feeling guilty, so she turned her frustrations on Gai.

"And you want me to change all that and destroy the dynamics of your team?"

"No, I… That is…" He sighed.

"I know all this and it's also partly my fault for paying it so little attention, but…"

"But WHAT, Gai?"

"I don't want her to change. I just want her to be happy with herself and for that she has to become stronger. It's what she believes will help her. You do know that you're her ideal, right Tsunade-sama?"

The Hokage leaned back in her chair with another sigh and closed her eyes.

"I know that very well, but at her current level, she will never become a second me. And I don't think it would fit her very well anyway… We're facing a problem here, Gai. You want Tenten to become stronger but still keep her old role in the team dynamics. That's not going to work, it's too contradictory. We all know that people with great strength and skills do not like to play a secondary role, hell NOBODY likes playing a secondary role!"

Shizune coughed silently and Tsunade raised an eyebrow at her assistant.

"Well, _I _don't particularly care playing a low-profile role, Tsunade-sama. I'm very content with it, even though you'll admit I do have very specialized skills…"

The busty blonde slowly blinked at her assistant and Gai started beaming.

"Well then, why don't you try teaching Tenten?" Tsunade quipped.

But Shizune shook her head and went over to a cabinet to pick out Tenten's file.  
She returned to the desk, skimming through the pages all the time.

"I wouldn't be a very good choice and you know it. As we already established, she's not very good with medical ninjutsu. It would only serve to frustrate her further. She is, however very skilled with weapons…"

Here Shizune laid out the pages for the other two to look over and Gai leaned in closer around Shizune's shoulder, causing the woman to shift away self-consciously.

The papers held all of Tenten's stats and mission reports, but Shizune had shifted them so her skill stats were on top of the stack of papers.

"See here? She's not only good with accuracy and handling of virtually every weapon we know, he's also quite proficient at producing them and apparently she enjoys trying out new inventions or exotic stuff…"

Tsunade nodded and glanced at Gai.

"Did you know she spends her days off apprenticing with one of the local smiths?"

The jounin shook his head and craned his neck to read more of the information.

"She never told us…"

"Probably because you never listen to her anyway…" Shizune muttered.

"THAT'S NOT TRUE!" Gai bellowed directly into the brunette's ear as he was still leaning close to her to read the pages and Shizune jumped back in surprise.

"Ouch, I get it, I get it! Seriously!"

Tsunade smirked a little at her assistant, who took to reprimanding Gai about keeping his volume to indoor levels. The Hokage left her assistant to it and scrutinized the pages before her.

The young chuunin kunoichi of Team Gai really did not seem to have any remarkable features about her other than her accuracy and maybe her diligence in training, which was quite high the blonde woman realized with a frown. Her training schedule was rigorous and, if she was deciphering Gai's messy handwriting on the semi-annual report card correctly, she spent most of her time with that Hyuuga boy. Interesting, she had to admit as she remembered Sakura and Naruto independently proclaiming on more than one occasion that the Hyuuga prodigy was hard to get along with.

"Shizune?" She interrupted the brunette's lecture on common courtesy rather abruptly.

"Yes, Tsunade-sama?"

"What did you want to achieve in showing us this file anyway? You must have an agenda, right?" She had never known her assistant to do something without a reason.

"Well, I was thinking… If she wants to get stronger and we cannot offer her adequate teaching… Why not send her to Enoshima-sama? Under the pretext of a mission as to not arouse suspicion with her team and friends?"

Gai stared at the woman, who still had her fist raised from intimidating him only seconds before and forced his voice into a semblance of seriousness.

"But were you not the one saying we would disrupt our dynamics, if Tenten were to become stronger?"

"Hush, Gai!" The Hokage snapped and threw a paper-weight at him, which he ducked without effort but at least it kept him silent.

"Shizune, why would you suggest Enoshima-san? We're talking about the same person here, right? Mizu no Kuni's Enoshima-san?"

"Yes, him. The only inhabitant of Koshigoe Island."

Gai couldn't keep quiet any more, this was about his student's future after all. So he bravely opened his mouth to inquire into the matter, but Shizune beat him to it. Before he could even raise his voice she answered his question hastily, without a doubt afraid he might screech into her ear again.

"He's a collector we met on our travels a few years back. He allowed us to hide on his island for a couple of weeks to escape the debt collectors…"

"Wait, a collector hid you from a bunch of other collectors?" Gai was blatantly confused, not so much by the fact that the two women had went into hiding, everyone knew after all that the Hokage was beyond bad at gambling.

Tsunade sent her assistant an annoyed glare and coughed lightly to get Gai's attention.

"He's a weapon's collector. Though he may be a bit eccentric it's actually not such a terrible idea, Shizune, maybe Enoshima-san is just the person Tenten needs to talk to…"

Shizune nodded quickly to take Tsunade's mind off her slip-up about the Hokage's gambling habit and squeaked:

"I'm sure it's the right thing to do, Enoshima-sama is a bit special after all…"

Gai crossed his arms and tilted his head from side to side, deep in thought.

"So you want me to send my only female student to an island in another country, which is inhabited by a sole male person, who is not only eccentric and a weapon's collector, but also a bit "special", whatever that means, and tends to hide fugitives on his property?"

Tsunade waved her hand, laughing loudly, while Shizune looked distinctly unhappy with the way he had put it.

"Don't worry, Gai! The more I think about it, the more it seems to be the best option we have! Enoshima-san will teach your girl what we can't convey to her, I'm sure he will! And don't worry about him being a man, first of all, he's basically _ancient_ and secondly, he has been in mourning for his wife for… well actually that's the reason he moved to Koshigoe Island, right Shizune?"

"Tsunade-sama, I don't think it's proper for us to discuss it this way, Enoshima-sama deserves a little more respect…"

"Gee, alright, alright. I'm sorry." Tsunade stood from her seat and placed her hands down on the still open file, a picture of Tenten smiling up from one of the stray pages.

Looking at the still unhappy jounin in front of her desk, the Hokage's eyes bore into his until he sagged a little.

"Tell Tenten to report to me two days from now at 8 am sharp. Until then I will have negotiated with Enoshima-san. This better be a benefit for all of us! Really, it's so much paperwork!"

"Which I'll be doing anyway, Tsunade-sama…" Shizune mumbled and led the unhappy Gai to the door on the far side of the office.

Before she closed it on his defeated form, she sent him a cheery smile and whispered:

"Don't worry, it was the right thing to come to us about this. I'll make sure Tenten comes to no harm. Enoshima-sama may be a very difficult person, but he is kind to a fault. Tenten will learn something valuable, one way or another…"

Gai stared at the dark wood of the door for a good five minutes, before he trudged off to find his female student.

"'Very difficult' she says. Eccentric, special and very difficult. Sounds like a hermit version of Orochimaru. What have I done?"

* * *

Next chapter will have a bit more Tenten again (alright, mostly Tenten). See ya?


End file.
